Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 1:

In page 7, line 4, after “writing” to insert the following: “, or by any other manner and in any such system as may be prescribed by the Minister in accordance with subsection (6),”.

This is about the warning system we talked about during the course of this Bill. In other words, if somebody commits an offence by breaching a safe access zone, a garda can give them a warning, tell them what they are doing is not on and move them on. The question arose in the course of the discussion around this of how the Garda would record warnings as protests moved from one health delivery centre to another, whether that be a GP clinic, a family planning centre or a hospital. The answer we were given was that it does not have a system to record the warnings as of yet. I have said this before and I will say it again. I find it bizarre that in 2023, members of a modern police force cannot record and share with each other such information on time in these settings. Otherwise, we may well be wasting our time trying to pass this Bill and enact it so women and people accessing abortion services remain safe, workers do not feel intimidated, doctors' clinics are not threatened and their homes or other places cannot be picketed or intimidated. That is why I submitted these amendments.

Amendment No. 3 provides that in consultation with the Minister for Justice, the Minister for Health shall prescribe by way of regulation systems that shall be used to record warnings. I do not think the Minister is going to accept this. What he said in the past was that he cannot instruct the Garda Síochána on how to do its work. Generally speaking, that is probably correct but there is an absence of a system whereby gardaí can record warnings of protestors or those who object to abortion services who move from location to location in the act of attempting to intimidate either those who provide the service or those who access it.

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